A bizarre looking, monstrous sea creature washed up on the shores of an Indonesian beach earlier this week, drawing swarms of locals and scientists who wanted to witness the behemoth in person. A resident named Asrul Tuanakota, 37, stumbled upon it in the darkness and initially thought the immense object was a stranded boat.

The bloated corpse, around 50 feet long, was found on Hulung Beach on Serum Island in Indonesia’s Maluku province, according to the Jakarta Globe. It’s believed to have been there for at least three days before being found.

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Pictures show the monstrous creature’s discolored body lying in shallow water on the island, turning the surrounding ocean red. And the creature has begun to reek: residents asked the government to step in to remove the remains before the stench becomes unbearable.

While it’s unclear exactly what the creature is, suggestions range from being a giant squid to a humpback whale. Scientists descended on the area to take samples of the body in an attempt to officially identify it, but many experts agreed it was likely some sort of whale.

“[Based] on the images and videos, in the advanced state of decomposition it is not possible to determine whether it is a humpback whale or not,” Marcus Chua, a museum officer at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum told Mashable. He noted that the creature might be a baleen whale, but is probably not a giant squid because they’re not typically recorded in the area.

Creatures from the deep don’t often end up on land. Most marine mammals that die at sea never wash up on beaches, according to National Geographic. But when they do, they tend to make headlines, as animals in an advanced state of decomposition in the water often become unrecognizable. As has happened in the past, locals often dub washed up creatures monsters from the deep or suggest they could be entirely new species because they look so alien.

In February, a giant, white-haired covered blob washed up on a shore in the Philippines, weighing in at more than 4,000 pounds. Some suggested it could be a species previously unknown to man.

“It’s definitely a very decomposed sea creature in the later spaces of decomposition,” Lucy Babey, head of science and conservation for the animal charity Orca, told the BBC at the time.

The municipal office of Cagdianao said the remains merely came from a dead whale. The hairy covering was likely not hair at all, but decomposed muscle fibers, scientists said.

Read: Dead Whale With Stomach Full Of Plastic Bags Found Beached, Starved

Numerous other mysterious creatures have drawn curious onlookers as well.

In Montauk, Long Island, in 2008, a bizarre looking creature was crowned the “Montauk Monster” after nobody could identify what species it came from. Some scientists suggested the beaked and sharp-toothed creature could have been a decomposing raccoon, while others asserted it was some form of sea creature. Unfortunately, someone stole the animal and made off with it before scientists could conclusively identify it.

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